


the sky’s gone out

by constantblur



Series: 2018 Writing Challenges [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Keithtober, broganes, prompt: black paladin, sad angsty keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 07:52:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16237346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constantblur/pseuds/constantblur
Summary: Keith enters the cockpit and comes to an abrupt, involuntary halt. The blacklight is still unfamiliar, still seems like a flare of warning that he’s somewhere he shouldn’t be.He still feels like he’s intruding.In which Keith misses Shiro, and can’t quite reconcile that with the need to move forward.





	the sky’s gone out

**Author's Note:**

> based on the [keithtober](https://twitter.com/keithtober2018) day two prompt

Keith enters the cockpit and comes to an abrupt, involuntary halt. The blacklight is still unfamiliar, still seems like a flare of warning that he’s somewhere he shouldn’t be.

He still feels like he’s intruding.

“Perhaps you should spend some time bonding with your lion,” Allura suggested at breakfast that morning, which made all the other paladins freeze with their spoonfuls of food goo halfway to their mouths.

Keith clenched his fist around his own spoon hard enough to bend it. Freaking Alteans—they can create magical flying robots and pods that heal every illness and injury, but a spoon is still just a flimsy, stupid spoon.

At least destroying it gave him a temporary distraction from wanting to pull his bayard on Allura. That was not _at all_ the response Keith had wanted to hear when he’d said he could still feel the Black Lion reaching out for Shiro.

“I only meant,” Allura continued tentatively, “that both you and the Black Lion will feel better and function better as a unit if you can forge a bond as strong as your previous ones.”

It didn’t really matter what she meant or how she worded it. It amounted to the same thing to Keith: erasing Shiro. Removing all traces of him from the team. Taking his place.

 _I can’t_ , Keith thinks as his seat locks into place. His body had automatically moved into position, the orders Allura had given him once she’d convinced herself that this would be best for the team finally kicking in and forcing him to at least try. _I’m not Shiro, not even close. Everyone knows it. I can’t take his place_.

But someone needs to fly the Black Lion.

If it’s to be Keith flying Black and leading Voltron, Allura reasoned, then Black needs to accept him now as its true paladin.

Its only paladin. 

Keith swallows hard. He doesn’t want to do this. It feels _wrong_.

It feels like giving up on Shiro.

He feels something—some emotion that doesn’t seem to belong to him—wash through him. It’s disorienting for a moment before he understands: it’s the Black Lion, rumbling his empathy through their bond.

“Hey,” Keith murmurs, hands reaching forward to take the controls. “You miss him too, huh?”

There’s a sound in his head, almost like a whimper.

“Yeah,” Keith whispers. “It feels like that for me, too.”

And for the next hour, Keith sits slumped in the cockpit, eyes closed, commiserating with the Black Lion over the loss of someone neither of them want to replace.

It’s not the kind of bonding Allura wanted him to do, but this, Keith reasons, is what he and Black need.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/constantblur_)


End file.
